s," he agreed.

"But you are a sportsman? You go in for shooting?" she conjectured.

"No," he answered. "I gave up shooting years ago."

"Oh--? Hunting, then?"

"I hate hunting. One is always getting rolled on by one's horse."

"Ah, I see. It--it will be golf, perhaps?"

"No, it is not even golf."

"Don't tell me it is football?"

"Do I look as if it were football?"

"It is sheer homesickness, in fine? You are grieving for the purple of
your native heather?"

"There is scarcely any heather in my native county. No," said Peter,
"no. To tell you the truth, it is the usual thing. It is an histoire de
femme."

"I 'might have guessed it," she exclaimed. "It is still that everlasting
woman."

"That everlasting woman--?" Peter faltered.

"To be sure," said she. "The woman you are always going on about. The
woman of your novel. This woman, in short."

And she produced from behind her back a hand that she had kept there,
and held up for his inspection a grey-and-gold bound book.

"MY novel--?" faltered he. (But the sight of it, in her possession, in
these particular circumstances, gave him a thrill that was not a thrill
of despair.)

"Your novel," she repeated, smiling sweetly, and mimicking his tone.
Then she made a little moue. "Of course, I have known that you were your
friend Felix Wildmay, from the outset."

"Oh," said Peter, in a feeble sort of gasp, looking bewildered. "You
have known that from the outset?" And his brain seemed to reel.

"Yes," said she, "of course. Where would the fun have been, otherwise?
And now you are going away, back to her shrine, to renew your worship. I
hope you will find the courage to offer her your hand."

Peter's brain was reeling. But here was the opportunity of his life.

"You give me courage," he pronounced, with sudden daring. "You are in a
position to help me with her. And since you know so much, I should like
you to know more. I should like to tell you who she is."

"One should be careful where one bestows one's confidences," she warned
him; but there was something in her eyes, there was a glow, a softness,
that seemed at the same time to invite them.

"No," he said, "better than telling you who she is, I will tell you
where I first saw her. It was at the Francais, in December, four years
ago, a Thursday night, a subscription night. She sat in one of the
middle boxes of the first tier. She was dressed in white. Her companions
were an elderly woman, English I